


Next to -liness

by ClarySage (ClaryTehSage)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 22:23:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15981746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaryTehSage/pseuds/ClarySage
Summary: Warnings & Summary: I can’t stop with the silliness…I’m sorry. A tickle fight, snark, and brotherly lurv…scary, I know.Notes: I asked Acostilow for a challenge and received.It was: Dean/Sam – CleanlinessThen, she beta’d me Oh! The betaing!…thanks babe! ^_^





	Next to -liness

There were a lot of things about Dean that bothered Sam. Sometimes, there were far too many to actually even begin thinking about making a list. Then there were times, like now, when he noticed one particular thing, and couldn’t stop mentally picking at it. Dean was cleaning his nails, again. 

Sam wasn’t sure how it made him feel other than vaguely annoyed. Sometimes, he felt as if he’d like to maybe laugh at it, but then that cursed empathy would overtake him and he’d let the urge to giggle fade into the background once more. But really, who cleaned their fingernails with a knife? It was just so…so fake.

Sam only realized after Dean was staring hard at his left ear, that he’d actually said that last bit aloud. He watched as Dean’s lips pursed and opened, nearly cringing before straightening his spine and sitting up on the hotel bed.

Dean though, didn’t say anything, his mouth closing gently; then he carefully laid the knife on the nightstand, bending over to rifle through his bag. After a moment he pulled out a small black kit, and glancing with narrowed eyes at Sam, unzipped it and lay it open upon the bed.

This time, Sam did laugh, he just couldn’t hold it back. With a glare, Dean picked up a nail file and began running it slowly across his right thumbnail. Sam leaned across the space between the beds and picked up the kit at one end as if it would bite him. It was the kind of thing you saw at any neighborhood drug store, they usually sold for five bucks; he’d even gotten one as a secret Santa gift once. For a minute he was lost in thought as he tried to recall where the little kit might be now. Then, shaking his head, he tossed the kit back next to Dean, and watched.

When they’d been kids, Dean never cared about things like this, cleanliness. He’d always been more of a dirty boy. Tracking in filth from outside, taking showers fitfully, wearing grimy laundry because he was too lazy to find a clean shirt. In short, he’d been every other teenage boy in the world, well, in regards to cleanliness at any rate.

Sam didn’t remember Dean being this clean shortly before he left either. Yet here he was, his self-bonafied manly man of a brother, daintily running a nail file over his pinky and blowing the dust off. “What’s changed so much in four years?”

Sam tried not to wince as Dean’s gimlet gaze again focused on him again. “Dude,” he muttered in an affronted tone, and started on his left hand. 

“No, seriously, why,” Sam paused, blowing out a deep sigh, knowing this conversation only led to trouble, “Why, are you cleaning your nails?”

Dean pursed his lips and blew at his nails, absently buffing them on his shirt before eyeing them carefully. “I’m not.”

“Uh, you are,” Sam pointed out.

“No, I’m not.”

“You’ve got a kit, it’s sitting beside you, and you’re cleaning your nails.” Sam said carefully, as if speaking to a mental patient, or maybe just his brother. He made a gesture with his hands indicating filing nails and waited.

Dean waggled the nail file in Sam’s face, “This,” and he said it slowly and carefully, as if speaking to a mental patient, or maybe just his brother, “is a nail file, say it with me now, Sammy, nail file. Not,” and he paused, picking up the knife, “a nail cleaning utensil.”

Sam stared at him for a full and round thirty seconds. “You…”

“Yes?”

Sam shook his head again, and leaned back against the thin comforter of the hotel bed. “Fine, why are you doing that?”

“I’m glad you asked Sammy.” Dean put down the knife, and tucked away the nail file, pulling out a small rubber buffer and beginning to buff his nails. 

Sam stifled a laugh, and then tried to look serious. “Well?”

Dean shrugged, and started buffing the other hand. “Girls like nice hands?”

There was a thump as Sam fell off the bed. A short ‘shrf shrf’ sound as he scooted across the carpet, and then, “Oh come on!”

Dean let off focusing on his nails, grinning at his brother, who now sat on the floor between the beds, hair askew. “You asked.”

“Yeah, but…” Sam couldn’t seem to find a gesture that indicated he thought buffed nails was going a bit too far, so he settled on an expression instead, incredulity. Then he glanced down, and laughed in an evil way. “Ha!” he said, and meant it, grabbing at one of Dean’s bare feet, and trying to show it to Dean righteously. “Then how come your toenails look like crap?”

Dean, trying to hold himself upright by grabbing for the nightstand, wound up unable to respond, due to the fact that his foot was nearly in his mouth, in more ways then one. “Duuude,” he whined, and then, in a slow motion worthy topple, fell to the side, and firmly kneed Sam in the thigh. 

“Ow.”

“Bitch.”

“You started it.”

“I did not!”

“You were cleaning your nails!”

“What’s so bad about that?!”

Carefully extricating himself from the brotherly tangle of limbs, Sam sat up, leaning back against the bed, panting. “Nothing, really. It’s just, weird.”

“Like you never do anything weird?” Dean asked, sitting up next to him and eyeing his bare toes. They really were dirty.

“…Okay, I may have some weirdness…” Sam admitted grudgingly.

“Some?”

“Shut up.”

“Anyway, they just look better this way.” Dean held out his hands for reference.

“Sure, you’re a girl, I understand.” Sam patted him consolingly on the arm and bit his lip to keep back the laughter.

Several expressions warred their way across Dean’s features, at last settling on indignation. “I am not the one who needs to buy special face washing crap.” His features decided to pull out smug, and settled handsomely into it. 

Sam’s mouth fell open attractively, but he found he had no good defense against the bald accusation, so he settled for throwing himself across Dean’s ribs and digging into them with his fingers. Why, oh why, did Dean always make him revert back to a teenager?

They rolled between the two beds, madly tickling one another, expressions so intense that from an outside perspective it might almost seem as if they were having a much more serious fight. Half grunted insults flung themselves from faded comforter to faded comforter proving it wasn’t all that serious. 

“Girl!”

“Pansy!”

“Supermodel!”

“Wait, how’s that an insult?” Dean asked, and then tried to rape Sam’s armpit with his carefully buffed fingertips. He succeeded in an unbridled attack, reducing Sam to a quivering mess of giggles and “ow’s”, then lay next to his brother, panting and carefully prodding one of his own slightly bruised ribs. Silence wreathed them gently for a few moments, “I like it when you laugh,” Dean said softly, so softly Sam wasn’t even sure he heard it.

“I’ve kind of missed it myself.”

Unconsciously, Sam leaned into Dean, so that they were connected lightly at the tops of their skulls. It almost seemed like a chance slip when their mouths met in a soft, breathy kiss. Then, as if it hadn’t happened, Dean held up his hand between them, and stared seriously at his nails. “Is it really that girly?” he asked in a peeved voice.

Sam sat up, serious expression on his own features, reached out, took Dean’s hand, and gently said, “Yes Dean, yes it is.”

“Asshole!” Dean rolled over and began applying more brutish tickling techniques.

“Yes Dean!” Sam shouted, and then laughed, “Yes I am!”


End file.
